Friday, April 25, 2008

25 April 1974: The Carnation Revolution in Portugal

Listen to José Alfonso's song "Grândola, Vila Morena," the song that announced Portugal's Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) thirty-four years ago today.

Carlos Saura's Fados features scenes of the Carnation Revolution accompanied by this song near the end of the film, suggesting that working-class experiences of dispossession and displacement expressed in fados, a musical genre which, like blues and tango, originated in the process of industrialization and working-class migration in the nineteenth century, could, and sometimes did, culminate in revolution.

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